


The Only Thing

by reapertownusa



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Nudity, Rape/Non-con References, Ratings: R, Spanking, Torture, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-07
Updated: 2011-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-27 01:31:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reapertownusa/pseuds/reapertownusa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean still carries a piece of hell inside him and Sam is the only one who can help him cope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: References to graphic torture. Vague references to past non-con and attempted suicide. Consensual non-erotic spanking of an adult.
> 
> Spoilers: Through early Season 4
> 
> Author’s Note: AU in which Sam was the one to raise Dean from hell and Dean's soul didn't come back so nicely intact.

The water flowed between Dean’s fingers, too hot and not hot enough. He stood bent over beside the tub, watching as the red-stained water swirled down the drain. The force of the faucet’s flow chiseled away the caked blood to make his hand look clean. It only perpetuated the lie.

What was on him, in him, it didn’t wash off. It didn’t matter how hard he scrubbed or how many gallons of holy water he drank. This was him.

His clothes were in a garbage bag on the floor. They’d been soaked through, the fibers drenched crimson. There was no point in trying to clean them. It had been his favorite flannel. That was before he had died.

Now it didn’t matter. He couldn’t feel it. There was little he could feel anymore.

The water continued to splash against the tub’s ceramic. When it ran clear, Dean’s moist hand came up to his chest. His fingers slipped around his amulet hanging there, gripping hard enough that its horns pressed painfully into his palm. Not painful enough, but enough to remind him.

One thing still mattered.

His clenched fist eased as he let out a breath. He held his hand back under the faucet, washing away the smear of blood that had transferred from the amulet. With a clean thumb, he rubbed away the remaining red from the crevices to reveal the aged patina beneath.

Dean flipped on the showerhead and straightened his stiff back. It was hard work slicing that much blood from a body. His skin was still sticky with it, his mind filled with the screams of other souls from another time and place.

All the energy drained from his body. His feet were nearly too heavy to lift over the rim of the tub, the shower curtain too much work to pull across. The spray of water pounded against his back, pinpricks like sand. He knew how long it took for blasted sand to eat away flesh down to polished bones.

With his head slumped forward, he distantly watched streams of blood washing down his legs. In reality, it was only enough to flush the water flowing over his feet pink. In his mind, there was no end to the sanguine river.

Steam rose around him. Fire. He’d spent hours charring the last bit of flesh from mangled bones, cramming the bits down screaming throats. Dean knew the taste of his own blacked flesh.

The breath was stolen from his lungs. His heart squeezed so tight he might think it would rupture from the pressure if he didn’t know how it actually felt to have hands shoved past his sternum and clutch his heart until it popped.

His hand was on autopilot when he reached for the shampoo. The slippery bottle escaped his fumbled grip. It clunked to the floor of the tub, too far away to bother retrieving.

“Dean? You okay in there?”

Worried words from just behind the bathroom door cut through Dean’s paralysis, again opening his lungs. He sucked in a gasp of air, found the energy to shove the faucet’s handle to cold.

“I’m fine.”

It didn’t count as a lie when they both already knew the truth.

The shock of icy water beat against his skin. He stood still waiting for the numbness to set in. Hypothermia. Frostbite. He’d never been frozen in hell. This was safe.

A hand set on his shoulder, sure and steady. It wasn’t the shock it should have been. He’d long ago given up pretending his body was his own. It was theirs to tear or mend.

His eyes blinked to stare at the blaring white of the bathroom’s tiles. A towel was wrapped around his shoulders, another drying his hair.

He wasn’t sure when he’d fallen to his knees or how long it had taken for the water’s chill to suck the heat from his body leaving him to shiver violently where he knelt in the tub. The water was gone now.

Sam.

A shaky sigh pressed through Dean’s chattering teeth. Arms looped around his chest to haul him to his feet, help him stumble back over the rim of the tub. He was guided to sit on the toilet seat.

“It wasn’t your fault, Dean.”

The statement was too ridiculous to warrant a reply. Whatever Sam was talking about, it had been Dean’s fault. If it could be broken, he would break it. It was a universal constant, as sure as death.

Dean’s eyes flickered up to stare into his brother’s worried gaze. He wanted to tell Sam not to worry. He wasn’t worth the bother.

The assurance wouldn’t come. There wasn’t enough air in his collapsing lungs. Lungs were more trouble than they were worth. Just one more thing to rip out.

As the world again began to close in, Dean could only force out two quiet words.

“Help me.”

His brother busied himself rubbing dry the last of the moisture from Dean’s skin. Like a striking viper, Dean’s hand clutched Sam’s wrist hard enough to feel the tendons shift beneath his grip. His eyes spoke the words his tongue couldn’t find.

Sam shook his head, trying to hide behind his bangs. He didn’t pull away from Dean’s grip, only set his free hand on the towel draped over Dean’s still subtly trembling thigh.

“Not tonight,” Sam said. “If you hadn’t done what you did, that vampire never would have talked. Bobby would still be-”

“I can’t breathe, Sammy. I can’t…I just can’t.”

Dean’s hand fell from his brother’s wrist. He had no right to ask anything of Sam, of anyone. His arms wrapped around himself to keep in the darkness, to try to keep it away from Sam.

It was Sam’s fingers that now gripped him tightly, the large hand on Dean’s knee the only thing grounding him. His gaze locked on it. He pushed his drowning mind to make the touch his sole focus. It wasn’t enough.

Sam patted Dean’s knee then stood, taking the connection away. “I’m sorry, Dean.”

The words cracked Sam’s voice. Barely concealed pain behind them flayed Dean like a barbed cat o’ nine. His shoulders slumped, his head falling to his chest.

Sam should have left him in the Pit where he belonged. It wasn’t too late to throw him back. The thing Sam pulled up, it wasn’t what he’d been looking for.

Dean Winchester had died over a year ago.

With the sound of leather being slipped from denim loops, Dean’s eyes squeezed closed. He choked a sob of relief.

The weight eased from his shoulder as he took Sam’s offered hand, letting the towel slip from his waist as Sam eased him onto his feet. A tentative hope lit the shadows trying to swallow him whole.

He didn’t remember walking to the bed, only found himself standing at the foot of it, passively watching Sam roll back the covers. The belt was still clutched doubled over in his brother’s hand as a pillow was positioned in the center of the bed.

Another moment on earth passed unnoticed while a hundred other moments of memory warred for dominance.

He knew what Sam would look like twisted inside out, where he’d have to make the cuts, which bones he’d have to twist. His nerves remembered what it felt like to have ribs bent backwards until they snapped. His ears knew the sound of one crack then the next.

Dean knew where to start and what curves to take to strip someone’s skin off in one piece. There were a few spots on his own back he couldn’t reach with the razor. Not for lack of practice.

Sam’s hand set on one of those spots, returning Dean to the room, the taste of acid in his throat and the sting of unshed tears he’d lost the ability to cry. Now Sam cried them all for him.

All Dean wanted was to be the one taking care of Sam again. He’d never wanted to be the burden, not to anyone, especially not to his little brother.

Dean lay down on the bed, his hips propped up by the pillow. Only the softness of the bed stopped him from automatically spreading his legs. The position was more familiar than Sam could ever know.

“You ready?”

With a stiff nod, Dean wrapped his arms around the pillow still at the top of the bed. He buried his face in the smell of cheap detergent and night sweats, not the tang of blood and bile.

There was a firm warning tap before the leather came down across his bare skin hard enough to shock his nerves from imaginary pain past.

Five strikes and he was back on earth. The searing stripes were grounded in reality. They resonated to depths that memories of his skull being crushed in by swinging chains could never touch.

Ten and it was Sam snapping a leather strap, not Alastair cracking a razor-twined whip. It was terror, not flesh and bone, being torn away from his soul. His hips shifted on the pillow. Not to get away, but to seek out the leather’s sting.

Fifteen and the howling chasm trying to suck him back in fell silent. The gates of hell crashed closed. All that was left was the part that couldn’t be shut out, that he’d tried to cut out. Sam would never let him touch a straight razor again.

Twenty and the weight of the razor that he could never set down on his own, was taken from his hands. The begging cries of hundreds of faceless souls quieted as they were taken off the racks.

Twenty five and he’d lost count, didn’t care. He was fully here and now with a pain he could bear filling his focus. A pain that shut down the rest, that he relished with the hunger he’d used to crave pie and a cold beer.

Warmth enveloped him as the blankets were tucked gently over him. The mattress shifted.

Dean rolled onto his side. The blistering burn wasn’t enough to deter him from lying on his back. He wanted to feel it.

Sam sat on the bed beside him leaning back against the headboard. His cheeks were wet. Dean wished his own were too. He shouldn’t do this to his brother.

“Is it better?” Sam asked, his tone uncertain.

While he would deny it in the morning, Dean nestled closer to his brother. He even put on hold the ass kicking he should be giving Sam when he tucked the blankets tighter around Dean’s shoulder and left his hand resting there.

Sam had saved him. Not just the once when he’d pried his broken soul from hell, but every minute of every day since.

It wasn’t something Dean could say. He looked up. His eyes found the ones he knew were watching him and with them, tried to convey everything in that space between him and Sam that was beyond the need for words.

In this moment, he could breathe. He wasn’t seeing the world through a filter of guilt-ridden brimstone. All he felt was the aching of his skin against soft sheets. All he could hear was the clicking of the baseboard heater. All he could see was his brother promising not to turn his back.

No matter how bad it got, Sam wouldn’t leave him. Day after day, he’d keep rescuing him from hell.

In a few moments, sleep would come not from a near overdose of alcohol, but from the peace Sam had given him. It would be granted by the quiet assurance of Sam’s hand still set protectively over his shoulder.

There was one thing that still mattered and it was sitting on the bed beside him.


End file.
